St. John's Episcopal Church Montclair

So maybe Abraham’s faith needed a little testing after all. But… here’s the thing. I can’t help but wonder if God’s test is of a different sort. Because this week I noticed something I never noticed before. God tells Abraham, “take your son, your only son, Isaac.” Except Isaac isn’t Abraham’s only son.

Some people, like Hagar, seem to live at the edges of the story. And yet, through her, we learn something essential about God: that God sees those the world overlooks and hears those the world would rather ignore.

When is the last time you heard an idea so good it made you laugh? The kind of idea that seems too good to be true, but there’s a part of you that hopes it’s not. Scripture is full of promises that seem so impossible they’re laughable. Take the promise that Sarah will have a child at 90 years old. Or the promise that God can build a beloved community from people who are diametrically opposed. And...

Most of us want clarity before we begin. We want to know how we’ll measure up; if it’s even worth trying; how others found success and how long it took them to do so. But the disciples didn’t take a spiritual gifts survey and wait for certainty. They didn’t sign up for classes and practice in private. They discovered their new gift for languages by speaking. They jumped right in. As scary as it is...

Jesus is asking the disciples to tell people about God’s radical love, talk to people they might not otherwise encounter, to welcome people into the family of God, and to teach them about Jesus’ way of life. Biblical commentator Matt Skinner describes it as “adding collaborators and accomplices to a movement that places mercy and compassion at its core.” I think that’s something we can all get beh...

In our gospel story Jesus had some interruptions too. He was sitting down at dinner with some new friends, but people kept barging in on the dinner party. Some of these people needed his attention right away. They were green light interruptions, where God was saying “Go, someone needs love” and some were red light interruptions, where God was saying “Stop, don’t get distracted from loving the pers...

Bishop Hughes Visits St. John's May 17, 2026

This week I was reading John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis, and a line jumped out at me so much I had to read it a couple of times. John reflects: “I am prone to despair, and so I know its powerful voice; it just doesn’t happen to be true.” Despair is loud, but loud and true are not the same thing.

Jesus tells us that the Father’s house has many dwelling places. I used to hear that as a promise about what is waiting for us, rooms already built, already assigned, already ours. But I think it means something more active than that. When we genuinely welcome each other, when we enter the work of loving someone as they actually are, we discover more of the house. Welcome is not the management of...

One Sunday, early in my priesthood, a particularly bad variant of COVID was making the rounds. Many people were quarantining at home that morning, including my fellow priest and most of our Altar Guild and ushers. Everything was going smoothly, until it got to communion. I realized I had forgotten to count how many people were in the congregation, so I didn’t know how much bread to consecrate....

The beloved slogan of St. John’s is “many paths, one journey.” And one of those paths is the road to Emmaus. Even though scholars cannot agree where exactly Emmaus was, we’ve all walked that road. It’s that journey between the grief and fear of Good Friday and the joyful surprise of Easter Sunday. It’s the road we walk after one door closes and before the next one opens. The road between a diagnos...

The Irish tell the story of a man who arrives at the gates of heaven and asks to be let in. St. Peter says, “Of course, just show us your scars.” The man responds, “I have no scars.” To which St. Peter says, “What a pity. Was there nothing worth fighting for?”

This is what Easter is all about. Knowing that there is no place we can go that Jesus has not already been. Jesus goes ahead of us in life and in death. But there is something else important too: Jesus doesn’t just go ahead of us - he also makes sure we are not alone on the way.

Outside the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, there is a verse from Genesis engraved on a plaque. It comes from the story of Joseph, and it reads “they said to one another, behold, here cometh the dreamer, let us slay him and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” This is how the world responds to dreamers - to Joseph, Martin, Jesus, and so many othe...

The Greek word used most often for sin in scripture is “hamartia.” It means, “missing the mark.” Which could make it sound as though sin is failing God’s test, not measuring up to the perfection asked of us. But it takes on a different meaning when we know that the word “hamartia” was originally used to describe missing the mark in archery or spear-throwing - moments when a miss does not simply fa...

Before I could really understand why this night mattered - before I had fancy theological words to put around it - I understood that this night was different, because it invited every part of me to participate.

In whom do we put our trust? The gospel of Matthew begins with magi journeying to find the newborn king of the Jews, and as we heard today, it ends with the epitaph “King of the Jews” hanging on the cross. From beginning to end, Matthew is asking us: what kind of king will we trust—and to what kind of kingdom will we belong?

There’s one moment in the gospels when these words are spoken in grief. This time, the words “come and see” are uttered by those who doubt rather than those who believe. Their invitation is to see the place where Lazarus has died. To witness death, despair, and decay. To see the ending of a story - or so we think.

What if…what if I told you the story we just heard is about restoring the sight of the community, and not the man born blind? That the greater miracle is the one that we do not get to see fulfilled in the text, because it requires us to take part in it. Now don’t get me wrong—Jesus spitting into the dirt, making mud, rubbing it on the man’s eyes, and sending him to wash so he can see for the first...

For as long as I can remember, I have been entranced by the story of the woman at the well. Despite its familiarity to us now, no part of the story goes as ancient audiences would have expected. You see, throughout scripture when a man and a woman meet at a well it’s usually a meet-cute, the start of their relationship. It’s how Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and Moses and Zipporah all meet....

The church register records those moments in the church when we step away from what we know and step into something new in our life of faith. Baptism is when we are welcomed into God’s family. Confirmation is when we say yes to the promise God has given us for ourselves. Marriage is when we begin a new life with a partner. And funerals are when our life on earth ends but our life in heaven begins....

In many ways, Lent feels like a season of spiritual cleaning. We incorporate more silence in our worship, begin our services with confession, we fast from the things that get in the way of us trusting God. But Lent is not six-weeks of austere will-power and beating ourselves up for the ways we have fallen short. It is more about wiping away the things that obscure our ability to remember who and w...

This Ash Wednesday, I am wondering if we as the Church have emphasized Jesus’ description of fasting because the prophet Isaiah’s call for fasting is too difficult. In our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today we see God’s people asking God why their fast is not enough. Why God does not seem to notice their acts of piety. The prophet explains that their fasting is self-serving. Their fast does...

God is not silent. But sometimes we need to be in order to hear God speak. Because there is so much noise. Noise from outside, and noise from within. And yet, we are called to listen. In fact, that’s what the voice from the cloud says when it stops Peter in his future-planning tracks. “This is my Son - listen to him.”

St. John’s, being here with you this past year has seasoned my faith and my life in more ways than I could possibly name in a sermon or an annual report. It has been nothing short of a blessing. A blessing that I know so many of our neighbors could use right now. This community - this world - needs your presence and your gifts. Because without who God made you to be, as individuals and as a commun...